Wednesday, January 13, 2010

ENDLESS BREATH

There are spells within time and language by which the living words are transformed and no longer hold precisely the old meaning because of their new shape, which causes them also to be pronounced differently in the language of the current tongue, and then some generations down the etymological expressway there is an exclamation of surprise at the discovery that a given word, so native to the tip of this very own tongue, stems from a tongue that spoke the word differently a long time ago, a word that in its own turning came from an even longer-ago tongue that spoke another of the same language altogether, passing the soul of the word along the length of breath from the hum of beginning, just as all things and people and tongues have been passed along without cessation if they exist today, and transcending the surprise is the enlightenment that 'your' language is not yours at all, but a borderless portion of a vast, living, autonomically shifting aurora that illumines the minds of the earth and outlives us each, can never be pinned down as so many have so humanly vaingloriously tried to do, and that this one endless breath that is language, as it breathes through you is breathing you too, breathing you into meaning, for you think along the lines and seams it affords you, as dictators (from the Latin root dicere, "to speak"), for example, have always known, and that the freedom and flexibility in your language correlate with the freedom and flexibility in your life; you are as free as your language, and as confined, unless you go beyond its edges into the wilds...

5 comments:

when traveling across countries and Iam interrupted by border police or just the assault of signs greeting me it is the same for me viewing the unending beauty of the land before me....... The land, sea or sky are not aware of the crossing point, it just goes on into forever. The same as you talk about the endless breath. Is it not true for the physical terra vista?

About Me

Born and raised in upstate New York, traveled for a decade after college, lived in various places around the world, keeping a journal. Settled in Kyoto in 1980, moved to this mountainside above Lake Biwa in 1995. Started Pure Land Mountain in April 2002.
Written contents 2002~2013 copyright Robert Brady